I’m flying over the highway on a dirt paved road to the bottom of the ocean and I have absolutely no idea where I’m headed. I’m supposed to be imagining the irreverence in time-space that pertains to all being but I have no idea what I’m supposed to be LOOKING for. Essentially, all I need is time. Time to sit down here, time to think. Such a burgeoning amount of ideas flowing through the nerve cells that connect not only to my eyes, but to the brain stems formulating all acts of communication.

YOU are the blogosphere. It’s the reader who makes all the important decisions. When you really put your mind to it, it’s the people who hold the power in the faux-democratic society. The reader is the metaphoric waterwings to the dolt-headed swimmer, lost at sea amongst a million others. With just a click, your mouse, keyboard, ostrich, whatever, decides exactly how to measure our fate. This internet shit is serious business and it’s blowing my mind.

I’m sitting here in front of my computer with a blank slate on my face and a slight glimmer in my eye. I’m staring at the plastic object; the object that illuminates a false sense of depth and perception, but I’m really staring into nothing. What is life but a conglomeration of cells that mesh beyond our comprehension? I’m sorry if you’re an engineer or something and you think this is petty, I’m just thinking out loud.

BUT WAIT. This isn’t thinking out loud, no, this is placing muscle to technology, and I’ve officially extended my human sense into what Marshall McLuhan warned us about. If television is only an extension of one sense, the computer is an extension of all others. I see into its endless depths, and I am able to perceive. I activate the nerve endings within my brain and I learn. I touch its keys with my fingertips and I scratch at the itch bothering my face. It is as if I am completely connected to this false sense of being. Further, I smell its scent and I hear its drive. It works at a level far beyond what we truly understand, but in time it will become us. This is the new flesh.

Now, perhaps I’ve been watching too much Cronenberg, but this is the extension of knowledge that the Canadian director, along with prominent sociologists such as Harold Innis and McLuhan warned us about. While Innis claimed that the text would endure, with its longer lasting binding and its infinite durability, it is undoubtedly the technological, as proposed by McLuhan, which will prevail. Think about it as such: We feel a book. We smell its pages and we even hear its crinkle as the spine bends while we read. It is the ultimate form of passable information and it is the original. For years humankind has experienced the writings of ancient poets and experienced them as put forth on the stage, but not until the last decade have we been given the access to such vast amounts of information at the click of a button. In a sense, when we see the student at the library, the chic mod at the Starbucks, or the mom at the table with her young child, most, if not all, have a laptop at their disposal. With recent technology, it has advanced to the point where we can access the web or take notes on our phones and iPods. We are literally connected to our electronics.

David Cronenberg predicted in his seminal Videodrome (1982) that technology (at this point in time, Betamax cassettes) would extend to become a part of us, in its essence creating new forms of mental and psychological control. What if we were to be programmed like a VCR? What if the means of human control came to pass as the norm? We could potentially have a whole new movement of slavery, abolishment, and civil rights. The computer, or better yet, the laptop, would become us. It already activates and utilizes the five senses to the utmost degree… The next step is to meld it into our moral fiber.

This is by no means a prophecy. In fact, this isn’t even an essay or dissertation. It’s a ramble, but it’s something I’ve thought about for a long time. Long live the new flesh. Laptop hands of the future!!!!